This is part three of the crazy travelogue about the French exchange programme. Much of our day, especially in the beginning, seems to have revolved around food, if my diary is anything to go by. On the 22nd of May, 2004, I’ve written about melon (not exactly a unique experience) and a tart (‘not sweet’) with […]

I have always loved fortune cookies. The cookie may taste like nothing, true. Yet, it’s nice to believe that the fortune inside is somehow, in some obscure and incomprehensible functioning of the universe, meant for you. No, I don’t like to imagine fortunes being manufactured and machine-cut before being inserted into cookies. Despite my desire to find connections […]

Making something delicious is uniquely delightful! I discovered that as a teenager when I used to beat batter well to get all those awkward emotions out of me. It’s wonderful what 3 eggs, 250 grams of chocolate, 250 grams of cream, 2 teaspoons of rum and a few spoons of sugar can make. God bless […]

I do not like oranges. I’ll write that again – just to make it very clear. I do not like oranges. In Athens, orange trees grow on either side of the road, utterly unwanted. It is true that juice companies are gradually beginning to market Greek oranges with eye-catching notes on their packs saying ‘Made […]

‘Pure veg’ is such a uniquely Indian concept. I used to mock it. My grandparents are pure veg. (Somehow that sounds odd. A pure veg restaurant is different from pure veg food, which is different from pure veg people. My grandparents are people, not food or restaurants. Just making things clear.) When they went to […]

I’ve always tried to be adventurous with food, but to be honest, I am completely unadventurous. I try, I swallow, I sometimes even appreciate. But I also suffer from an overactive imagination. I remember the time a teacher of my sister’s took us for a French meal. She took us to a beautiful, typical, arty […]

Yesterday, I baked a cake with a very dear friend. We began by separating the eggs. Or rather, she began with separating the eggs. I hate doing that. My father told me that there was a fancy new method in the Readers Digest. You break the egg on a plate, take a plastic bottle, squeeze […]

We managed, somehow, to get to Olympia, thoroughly unprepared. (How do we go to Olympia, please?) We enjoyed ourselves thoroughly there – how could we not? Yet, the whole day out in the sun got to us, eventually. And living on juice, bread and cheese is never a good idea. At Patras, we had an […]

The word ‘interesting’ is a perfectly tactful word that expresses nothing. It has become a word that’s neither positive nor negative, conveying that exact degree of neutrality that is considered diplomatic. And ‘interesting’ was exactly the word associated with my first experience of artichokes. I had read about artichokes and was willing to try, especially […]

I revisited a very old recipe-book today. A little bored of baking cakes and pies, I decided to look at different kinds of dessert for a change. So I took out my little green book that’s falling to bits – a book called Refrigerator Recipes. I remember liking the book very much because of its […]